Also keep in mind that supersonic won't help beyond the coasts due to noise/overflight rules that would require flights to slow down over the continents anyway.
And even for personal flights - considering that I have to travel only once a year between India and the US, I would very much welcome this option.
The current 24 hour long journey is just too brutal, and often time constraints mean that I can't break the journey into small hops over 3-4 days. And I shudder taking my family with me on such trips, given how much of a stress it causes.
If they actually can get 4,250nm of usable range, you might be able to do something in Japan to SEA or maybe SFO, and that routing would make more sense probably.
But this is really really unlikely to ever fly - the physics and economics are so stacked against this until something really tectonic happens with how we store and use energy... but like not fossil fuels. It would need to be something that borders on "free", like if fusion existed, and was safe, easy and light.
So $1,100 for today vs $7,000 for supersonic (using business class fares as a proxy) to save 9 hours of flight time. My assertion is that there's relatively few people on any given route who have enough money and fly that route enough to make this a viable niche outside of a very limited set of routes.
> I shudder taking my family with me on such trips
I hear you on that! But also the notion of spending $7k for each of us is somehow worse.
Using the example above, that would put supersonic flights in the range of 10x economy, which feels about right for airline pricing. (At least until there are tons of supersonic flights to push down prices.)
If there was a supersonic LAX-Singapore (I doubt India would allow supersonic planes), at least the longest leg of the trip is mostly over ocean, supersonic, and the Singapore-DEL flight is just a normal one.
The JFK-Singapore direct would still be hundreds of km longer.
